To:L. B. KAMENEV

Published:First published in 1964 inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 47.

      Sent from Paris to Vienna.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      pages243-244a.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Ireceived your letter (at last! I was about tokick up a
row). It is too late to send an express message or a wire.

Weare in too “great haste”, you write. I don’t
			       know....[1]How could Dan and Co. have been allowed to get away with it? And what
else ... wait for. But it is a great pity you were not in “greater haste”
to write us at once about the “formal doubts” entertained by thePravdaliquidators. The proofs were sent to you ten days ago: if
you had made haste to reply atoncethat you are not clear 011
this or that point, you would have had complete copies of the letters from
Russia already aweekago. Now the C.O., which came out late last
night, gives more quotations from the
letters.[2]

Isyour withdrawal fromPravdaessential for
us?[3]You seem almost ready to say yes—again being “in haste” to
write after the veryfirstconflict with Trotsky.

Ipersonally do not think that your withdrawal fromPravdais
essential [to us],so longasPravda[is] run so
colourlessly. After reading ... [your] item in No. 11, I thought ([and]
Grigory also said): this is toothless, colourless, [inconsequential],
verbose....

Whatis the purpose of our policynow, at this precise moment?
To build thePartycore not on the cheapphrasesof
Trotsky and Co. but ongenuineideological rapprochement between
the Plekhanovites and the Bolsheviks. Whether this willwork outI
do not know. If it doesn’t, then back to the Bolshevik Centre. If it does,
it will be a substantial step forward.

Weshall write to the Russian C.C. (insisting that Makar call it
together without waiting for the Menshevik scoundrels) that Dan (and
Martov) should beexpelledfromthe C.O. and Igor from the C.C. Bureau Abroad and replaced with
Plekhanovites.  The Plekhanovites printed ...  [in an issue ] ofGolos
Sotsial-Demokrata(you [ought to receive it ] within a few
days[4]).

... [53]fortheGolospeople ... against ... 10 ....  For the
Plekhanovites 11 ... but it isn’t do much a matter of numbers as of thebeginning of a break. The first step is always the hardest.

Ina few daysthe Mensheviks Will publish Martynov’s reply to
Plekhanov and, evidently, a reply to the C.O. Although Plekhanov doeswishto keep open the possibility of “returning” to theGolospeople, nothing so far seems to be coming of it.

Yourwithdrawal fromPravda—if it is inevitable—should in
my view be arranged with the utmost care (write an article against the
liquidators and againstGolos, let Trotsky turn it down!) with a
view to reporting to the C.O. anddraftinga decision on the
publication of a popular newspaper by the Central Organ. Either that, or
back to....

TheVienna group will say nothing.

Aboutthe report, I am not satisfied. To remind a per son does not mean
to harass him.Send the beginning. The whole thing by May 1 will
be too late.

Withbest regards,Yours,Lenin

[1]Manuscriptpartly damaged. Here and further on several words are
illegible. Words in square brackets have been inserted as suggest ed by the
context and the remaining legible letters.—Ed.

[2]Areference to Lenin’s article “Golos(Voice) of the
Liquidators Against the Party (Reply toGolos Sotsial-Demokrata)”
giving documentary proof of the refusal of the Menshevik liquidator members
of the C.C., R.S.D.L.P., to take part in the work of the C.C. and even in
the session held to co-opt new members (see present edition, Vol. 16,
pp. 156–64).

[3]L.B.Kamenev was delegated to the Editorial Board of Trotsky’sPravdaafter the January 1910 plenary meeting of the Central
Committee, which put off the question of making the paper an organ of the
C.C. until the next Party conference, but decided to subsidise it and to
send its representative to the Editorial Board “as a third editor”. After
the publication in the paper’s issue No. 14 of “Letter fromPravdato Thinking Workers” in which Trotsky sided with the
liquidators and the otzovists, Kamenev withdrew from the Editorial Board.

[4]Areference to G. V. Plekhanov’s article “The Latest Plenary Meeting
of Our Central Committee” published inDnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata(Diary of a Social-Democrat) No. 11 (March 1910) in which he wrote:
“... what isGolos Sotsial-Demokratafor Mensheviks of a certain
orientation? It is in effect their factional—and, moreover,
irresponsible—centre. By voting for the resolution pledging the closure
ofGolos... our ‘Mensheviks’—members of the C.C.—laid down on
the altar of the Party the heart, so to say, of their faction. The skeptic
will say that not all promises are carried out. But, I repeat, we have no
right to think that the comrades who gave this promise were insincere.”